Can the Eel Come Out to Play?
by I.C. Weener
Summary: Like a Precambrian crustacean in a nitroglycerin plant.


" _Kill me."_

\- Estelle, Tales of Vesperia

" _Kill me."_

\- Mayu, Fatal Frame II

 _"Adios muchachos."_

\- Burke, Aliens

" _Recall the Champion of Ruta's wrath, before she walked her chosen path."_

\- Kass, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

" _Darkest sketch. Darkest sketch."_

\- Robot Chicken

* * *

A Zora's ability to adapt to the climate rising around her could become a dangerous thing. Mipha was in the company of the most depraved traitors and assassins in all of Hyrule. The gathering chamber was lit by dim red torchlight. All of the figures crowded at her sides hid their faces behind masks and scarves. The walls around her were decorated with black tarps bearing the Yiga sigil.

The tribe matriarch sat cross-legged at the front of the secret base. She was a cold and withered woman, but she still had an eerily familiar quality underneath all the gloom. In more friendly lighting, she might have been the mirror image of Impa. She was joined by a deceptively shy-looking Yiga girl stationed closely to a lantern on her right.

"There's nothing to be ashamed of, child," the old Yiga woman said to her Zora guest. "Your friends will be saved from a great deal of despair thanks to what you've done today."

Mipha remained mournfully silent. A statue decorating the center of the sacrificial altar would have had more life to it than she did.

"Eh? Having second thoughts, child?" The crone tilted her head as she asked. Her withered features became softer as a comforting smile crossed her mouth.

"You're much wiser than that other spoiled princess. You know you can't win, but you can make things so much easier for everyone in this forsaken realm. Surrender now and when Calamity Ganon awakens, all the pain will be over in a blink of an eye."

The crone leaned forward where she sat. Her eyes flickered ominously in the shadows of the torchlight.

"That Zelda thinks only of digging up her old toys and preparing for her little war. Too much ambition for such a wretched girl. She insists on delaying the inevitable and will only cause more despair for all those around her. But you, Princess Mipha, you're the sort who can usher in the new world peacefully. You can create while that Hylian brat is only concerned with destroying."

Mipha stared down at her Champion mantle, asking herself what it really meant. How much would a few threads of pretty blue fabric woven by a powerless princess really protect them when it was the end of the entire world facing them, when their ancestors had barely held Ganon back 10,000 years ago and he had only been growing stronger every day since? Hesitantly, she reached into the sash and drew out a small rectangular object.

She held in her slippery webbed hands an artifact of great knowledge and power: A red Sheikah Slate. She had carefully encoded this particular one with enough information to end the war almost instantly. Biographical data on the other Champions. The magical stress limits of the Master Sword. The 6-note passcode that unlocked all of the royal family's closest guarded secrets, including control over the Guardians. She could continue to fight a neverending battle her heart told her she had no hope of winning, or she could simply give up the Slate and hand the entire kingdom over to the minions of Calamity Ganon.

"Everything you've asked for is here," Mipha whispered. She kept her head low with her golden eyes hidden behind her fins. The rows of cloaked Yiga figures began to gradually and anxiously loom closer toward her.

"Wait," she blurted in a fretful tone that caught them by surprise. She slowly lifted her head so her eyes met directly with the Yiga elder's.

"If I'm going to do this, I have to know I'm not doing it in vain," she whispered desperately. "Tell me he's not going to suffer."

The withered spinstress waved her hand to make her wolves back away. She cackled softly in the dim light.

"Ah. Of course, child. No good deed should go unrewarded."

The Yiga crone licked her wrinkled, haggard lips.

"The spirits of you and that handsome hero will be bound for eternity when the Calamity instantly strikes you down. Two little candles wrapped up together with all the darkness to yourselves. Your blood will seal the pact."

Mipha peered down at her hands again. She had promised to protect Link no matter what terrors faced them in their approaching doom. To a small degree, she wasn't betraying that promise. As long as Ganon was appeased, he would end Link's life by snapping his neck or injecting a fatal dose of Malice straight into his heart, when there were so many other cruel and agonizing ways he could leave the living world.

Mipha shook her head to stop herself from imagining it. On the brink of tears, she held out the Slate.

"Take it," she forced the words out of her mouth.

The Yiga girl standing to the crone's right stepped forward and plucked the Slate from Mipha's claws. She returned to her elder, whispered something into the old woman's ear, and dropped the Slate in her palms as if were worth the same as a bundle of twigs she had picked up at the market. The old Yiga matron closely turned the artifact in her hands and held it to her cheek, finally nodding to show the rest of the clan it was genuine.

The crone wrapped her withered fingers around the Slate and chuckled. The shadowy tribesmen around her broke into celebration. Mipha stared blankly at the ground and wept.

* * *

Mipha and Waterblight Ganon waded side by side on Vah Ruta's desecrated balcony. The entire realm was consumed in the Calamity. Soldiers were swept over by the hundreds, instantly reduced to ash in the beams of haywire Guardians. King Rhoam's castle was little more than a flaming crater with black pillars raised around it, the foundations for the new kingdom.

Mipha watched the horror she had caused with the Lightscale Trident resting at her side. Her thoughts were a swirling whirlpool. The sparkling rod rattled slightly in her trembling hand.

Behind the smoke and the murky clouds, the other Divine Beasts were rampaging in the distance. The Gerudo continent was being swept away under waves of sand. The Rito continent was being blown down in freezing winds. The mighty Death Mountain was collapsing into rubble.

Mipha's trembling became unbearable. In violent flash, she twisted her entire body sideways, screamed hysterically, and unleashed all of her hatred and all of her regret with a ferocious two-handed swing.

The silver of Mipha's trident clashed against the glowing blue of the Waterblight's ancient Sheikah spear. The Blight barely raised his weapon to stop her, blocking the strength of both of her arms with a single one of his own. He seemed more amused than offended that she would actually try to lash out at him, pulling up his oozing black fingers and waving them in an " _Ah-ah_ " motion.

Mipha sighed as she regained her senses, or lost them completely. She lowered the Lightscale Trident and silently awaited her fate. _All_ of the remnants of the old realm had to be eliminated before Ganon could call the battle truly won. Especially when it came to royalty.

The Waterblight slowly pointed the end of his spear an inch away from Mipha's gills and snarled through his snout. He waited and humorously gave her one last chance to defy him, to which she only raised her head and stared into his menacing eye in surrender. She took the end of his spear in her empty hand and rested it against her own scales so he'd know the most certain way to fell her.

The Waterblight jerked his elbow forward. The spear slid through Mipha's chest and out of her back like a shark fang piercing sea reeds. She flinched in a second of pain before toppling on her side with the glowing blade still sticking through her. The shallows of Vah Ruta's control shrine turned cloudy red around her.

Mipha closed her eyes and let her mortality drift away in the ripples. In her final moments, she thought about Link.

* * *

 _Author's note: This take on the story moves the blame away from Zelda and puts it more on Mipha goddammit I'm making your job sympathizing with Zelda easier._


End file.
